National Velvet (29 page)

    
Mi was gone and Velvet drifted through the crowd.

    
But suddenly Mi was back again. “Keep your eyes skinned an' keep AWAY from everyone who'll talk!” he hissed, and was gone again.

    
The crowd buzzed round the Tote, and many looked curiously at Velvet's black cap and bony childish face. She was not unlike an apprentice lad.

    
The horses were parading in the Paddock. There came The Piebald. Velvet stared at him in shivering appreciation. He wore borrowed clothes with a knotted yellow rope bumping on his quarters. Mi led him with a white leading rein, wide like a tape. The number . . . 4 . . . was tied on Mi's left arm. As he came into the Paddock a buzz came from the crowd and here and there laughter. Round and round went the horses, and the rain down Velvet's neck.

    
Suddenly she saw the little men go in. Wide shoulders, gay caps and little feet. She walked forward, entered the Paddock, and went straight to the bushes. There was a pause. The horses circled. Every jockey went up to his Owner. She alone had no one. She stood firm and looked around her, conscious that this was her worst moment to-day.

    
Then up came Mi with The Piebald. She stripped her coat off and he held it on his arm, pulled the rugs off the horse on to his shoulder, stooped to her left leg and flung her up into the saddle. Almost at once
the horses moved away, Mi walking beside her to the gate.

    
She was quite definite, quite easy. Now it was over, the creeping like a thief, the doubts, the waiting. No one would stop her now. The worst moments had come and gone, and there could be no doubt at all that now she and The Piebald were in together for the Grand National.

    
“There . . . I never told you,” said Mi, low and hoarse, walking beside her. “Don't lie up on his neck! But it's too late now . . .”

    
“Ssh,” said Velvet, looking straight ahead of her at something that seemed like a crane upon a raised embankment.

    
“I'll not ‘ssh'!” said Mi, his heart bursting. “I'll say, 'Think of yer ma!' “

    
He snipped off the leading rein by its chromium hook and The Piebald swung through the gate.

    
“Gawd . . . a'might . . .” said Mi, struck short. “I never told her to ride down in front of the Stands before going to the post . . .”

    
But for Velvet it was only follow-my-leader. She went down easily with the other horses, turned, stood slightly in her saddle, and galloped back. Mi started running for the truckway. “I'll never make Becher's . . . not in this crowd. Not unless there's a muck-up at the post.”

    
Just ahead of him, turning out from the stable-roadway, came the black motor ambulance, with the doctor sitting sideways in the back, looking at a paper. Behind
the ambulance, from the same turning, crawled out a sinister, square-bottomed coffin, a knacker's cart, drawn by an enormous pigeon-chested shire-horse. Ahead of the ambulance, and blocking the way, went the horse ambulance, with its crane, drawn by two shire-horses in tandem. All made their way to Becher's. Another knacker's cart was trundling along far away by Valentine's, and yet another pushed its way in Melling Road.

    
“Black slugs . . .” said Mi, running, panting, pushing.

    
At the post the twenty horses were swaying like the sea. Forward. . . . No good! Back again. Forward. . . . No good! Back again.

    
The line formed . . . and rebroke. Waves of the sea. Drawing a breath . . . breaking. Velvet fifth from the rail, between a bay and a brown. The Starter had long finished his instructions. Nothing more was said aloud, but low oaths flew, the cursing and grumbling flashed like a storm. An eye glanced at her with a look of hate. The breaking of movement was too close to movement to be borne. It was like water clinging to the tilted rim of the glass, like the sound of the dreaded explosion after the great shell has fallen. The will to surge forward overlaid by something delicate and terrible and strong, human obedience at bursting-point, but not broken. Horses' eyes gleamed openly, men's eyes set like chips of steel. Rough man, checked in violence, barely master of himself, barely master of his horse.
The Piebald ominously quiet, and nothing coming from him . . . up went the tape.

    
The green Course poured in a river before her as she lay forward, and with the plunge of movement sat in the stream.

    
“Black slugs” . . . said Mi, cursing under his breath, running, dodging, suffocated with the crowd. It was the one thing he had overlooked, that the crowd was too dense ever to allow him to reach Becher's in the time. Away up above him was the truck-line, his once-glorious free seat, separated from him by a fence. “God's liver . . .” he mumbled, his throat gone cold, and stumbled into an old fool in a mackintosh. “Are they off?” he yelled at the heavy crowd as he ran, but no one bothered with him.

    
He was cursed if he was heeded at all. He ran, gauging his position by the cranes on the embankment. Velvet coming over Becher's in a minute and he not there to see her. “They're off.” All around him a sea of throats offered up the gasp.

    
He was opposite Becher's but could see nothing: the crowd thirty deep between him and the Course. All around fell the terrible silence of expectancy. Mi stood like a rock. If he could not see then he must use his ears, hear. Enclosed in the dense, silent, dripping pack he heard the thunder coming. It roared up on the wet turf like the single approach of a multiple-footed animal. There were stifled exclamations, grunts, thuds. Something in the air flashed and descended. The first over
Becher's! A roar went up from the crowd, then silence. The things flashing in the air were indistinguishable. The tip of a cap exposed for the briefest of seconds. The race went by like an express train, and was gone. Could Velvet be alive in that?

    
Sweat ran off Mi's forehead and into his eyes. But it was not sweat that turned the air grey and blotted out the faces before him. The ground on all sides seemed to be smoking. An extraordinary mist, like a low prairie fire was formed in the air. It had dwelt heavily all day behind the Canal, but the whole of the Course had remained clear till now. And now, before you could turn to look at your neighbour, his face was gone. The mist blew in shreds, drifted, left the crowd clear again but hid the whole of the Canal Corner, fences, stand and horses.

    
There was a struggle going on at Becher's; a horse had fallen and was being got out with ropes. Mi's legs turned to water and he asked his neighbour gruffly, “Who's fallen?” But the neighbour, straining to the tip of his toes, and glued to his glasses, was deaf as lead.

    
Suddenly Mi lashed round him in a frenzy. “Who's fallen, I say? Who's hurt!”

    
“Steady on,” said a little man whom he had prodded in the stomach.

    
“Who's fallen?” said Mi desperately. “I gotta brother in this . .'.”

    
“It's his brother!” said the crowd all around him. “Let him through.”

    
Mi was pushed and pummelled to the front and remained
embedded two from the front line. The horse that had fallen was a black horse, its neck unnaturally stretched by the ropes that were hauling it from the ditch.

    
There was a shout and a horse, not riderless, but ridden by a tugging, cursing man, came galloping back through the curling fumes of the mist, rolled its wild eye at the wrong side of Becher's and disappeared away out of the Course. An uproar began along the fringes of the crowd and rolled back to where Mi stood. Two more horses came back out of the mist, one riderless. The shades of others could be discerned in the fog. Curses rapped out from unseen mouths.

    
“What's happened at the Canal Turn? What's wrong down at the Turn?”

    
“The whole field!” shouted a man. The crowd took it up.

    
“The field's out. The whole field's come back. There's no race!” It was unearthly. Something a hundred yards down there in the fog had risen up and destroyed the greatest steeplechase in the world.

    
Nineteen horses had streamed down to the Canal Turn, and suddenly, there across the Course, at the boundary of the fog, four horses appeared beyond Valentine's, and among them, fourth, was The Piebald.

    
“Yer little lovely, yer little lovely,” yelled Mi, wringing his hands and hitting his knees. “It's her, it's him, it's me brother!”

    
No one took any notice. The scene immediately before them occupied all the attention. Horses that had
fallen galloped by riderless, stirrups flying from their saddles, jockeys returned on foot, covered with mud, limping, holding their sides, some running slowly and miserably over the soggy course, trying to catch and sort the horses.

    
“It's ‘Yellow Messenger,' ” said a jockey savagely, who had just seized his horse. “Stuck on the fence down there and kicking hell.' And he mounted.

    
“And wouldn't they jump over him?” called a girl shrilly.

    
“They didn't wanter hurt the pore thing, lady,” said the jockey, grinning through his mud, and rode off.

    
“Whole lot piled up and refused,” said a man who came up the line. “Get the Course clear now, quick!”

    
“They're coming again!” yelled Mi, watching the galloping four. “Get the Course clear! They'll be coming!”

    
They were out of his vision now, stuck down under Becher's high fence as he was. Once past Becher's on the second round would he have time to extricate himself and get back to the post before they were home? He stood indecisively and a minute went by. The Course in front of him was clear. Horses and men had melted. The hush of anticipation began to fall. “They're on the tan again,” said a single voice. Mi flashed to a decision. He could not afford the minutes to be at Becher's. He must get back for the finish and it would take him all his time. He backed and plunged and ducked, got cursed afresh. The thunder was coming again as he reached the road and turned to face the
far-off Stands. This time he could see nothing at all, not even a cap in the air. “What's leading? What's leading?”

    
“Big brown. Tantibus, Tantibus. Tantibus leading.”

    
“Where's The Piebald?”

    
“See that! Leonora coming up . . .”

    
They were deaf to his frantic questions. He could not wait, but ran. The mist was ahead of him again, driving in frills and wafting sedgily about. Could Velvet have survived Becher's twice? In any case no good wondering. He couldn't get at her to help her. If she fell he would find her more quickly at the hospital door than struggle through the crowd and be forbidden the now empty Course.

    
Then a yell. “There's one down!”

    
“It's the Yank mare!”

    
The horse ambulance was trundling back with Yellow Messenger from the Canal Turn. Mi leapt for a second on to the turning hub of the wheel, and saw in a flash, across the momentarily mist-clear Course, the pride of Baltimore in the mud underneath Valentine's. The Piebald was lying third. The wheel turned and he could see no more. Five fences from the finish; he would not allow himself to hope, but ran and ran. How far away the Stands in the gaps of the mist as he pushed, gasping, through the people. Would she fall now? What had he done, bringing her up here? But would she fall now? He ran and ran.